ASHE

Statistics provided by the Office for National Statistics' survey, the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, has long been a source of data to which employment consultants have referred to forecast earnings and upon which lawyers and the courts have relied.

While the application of ASHE has its uses, in our view it is entirely wrong and misleading to postulate a career based on these values.

The questionnaire, extract below, sent to employers by ONS is not designed to extract information from which to quantify at what level a worker may sit in terms of career hierarchy. As may be seen from the ASHE questionnaire the only reference to the job is at 2b and 2c.

If, for example, the answer to 2b is 'Chartered Accountant' it is impossible to determine whether the person is newly qualified or how many years post qualification. ONS is unable to decipher where a worker sits in the grand scheme of things and therefore it is just not possible to match earnings data to a particular rank.

The use of mean (average) values and percentiles/quartiles is equally inappropriate as the median is the preferred methodology recommended by the ONS.

Consequently, ASHE data should be used only for the purposes of comparison and reference made to a number of other sources to provide a complete picture.

For a full explanation please download Trevor's article which appeared in the April 2010 edition of APIL's 'Focus' magazine here.

APIL ARTICLE DOWNLOAD

Click here to download a pdf of Trevor's APIL's 'FOCUS' magazine article

ASHE QUESTIONNAIRE DOWNLOAD

Click here to download a pdf of the ASHE Questionnaire.

 

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